Impact of external examinations on high school curricula: Perceptions of teachers and students and document analysis

ABSTRACT: The International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) Exam, the Exam for Transition to Higher Education (YGS) and the Exam for Placement for Undergraduate Studies (LYS) are external exams providing direct admission to higher education abroad: and they are significant for 17-18 year-old Turkish Cypriot students. The discontentment in the newspapers of North Cyprus about the low achievement results for the YGS and the LYS and the teachers’ and students’ complaints about the inconsistency in the alignment of YGS and LYS content with school curricula have compelled a need for a study. This qualitative study analyzed how teachers and students in public high school and colleges in North Cyprus perceived the impact of the IGCSE’s, YGS’s and LYS’s on 11th- and 12th-grade science, mathematics, and language curricula, and also implemented document analysis on the General Certificate of Education (GCE) O Level Turkish, IGCSE English as a Secondary Language, 2010-2012 YGS and LYS1-3, and LYS5 documents to explore the content consistency among them. Using a stratified purposive sampling method, 86 teachers and 120 students were interviewed from natural sciences, mathematics, and language programs in public high schools and colleges in North Cyprus in the 2011-2012 academic year. Data were collected with a semi-structured interview technique, and a content analysis technique was used in data analysis. Content analysis was performed on the teachers’ and students’ responses. Results revealed that all public college teachers and students perceived consistency between the content of college curricula and the IGSCE, ‘A’ and ‘AS’ level exams, and almost all public high school teachers and students perceived inconsistency between YGS content and the content of 11th and 12th-grade curricula. Furthermore, a few public high school teachers and students thought that the content of 12th-grade curricula was inconsistent with LYS content. Moreover, English language teachers in public colleges and high schools thought that the contents of both the IGCSE English as a second language examination and the LYS5 English language tests were inconsistent with the content of English language curricula in both schools. Additionally, perceptions of teachers and students in public high schools and colleges revealed that these external examinations had wash-back effect on teaching and learning. The results also revealed that the form and content of teacher-made tests in public colleges were similar to IGSCE, ‘A’ and ‘AS’ level examinations, whereas in public high schools they were partially different from the YGS and the LYS. Document analysis of 2010, 2011, 2012 YGS, LYS1, LYS2, LYS3, LYS5 and mathematics, natural sciences (physics, biology, and chemistry), Turkish language and discourse, Turkish Literature, and English language textbooks were conducted. Results revealed extensive inconsistencies between YGS tests and the contents of 11th- and 12th-grades curricula that correlated with the perceptions of the public high school teachers and students. Inconsistencies were also detected between the LYS tests and the contents of 11th- and 12th-grades curricula. This finding conflicted with the perceptions of the majority of high school teachers and students. Additionally, it was found that the 2010, 2011 and 2012 LYS5 English language tests were 33%-36% inconsistent with both grades. Moreover, 33%-67% inconsistency was found between the writing section of the college language textbooks and the writing contents of GCE Turkish Ordinary level and Edexcel London Examination for IGCSE English as Second Language tests of 2010, 2011 and 2012. These findings were not in correlation with the perceptions of public high school and college English language teachers. As a result, it was found that participant teachers and students perceived high rate of inconsistencies between the contents of the external examinations and the curricula in use. Therefore, students put pressure on teachers to do test-oriented teaching, and teachers themselves felt obliged to help students to increase their achievements in these examinations. Due to this a very prevalent wash-back and adverse effect of external examinations were seen on teachers’ content selection and narrowing, on curriculum implementations, and on the tests that they made. Moreover, document analysis results also correlated with the perception of teachers and students about the inconsistencies between the contents of these very external examinations and the 11th and 12th Grade curricula. Therefore, modularization of YGS and LYS, and content alignment of these examinations to high school curricula were recommended. Furthermore, it was highly recommended to administer YGS at the end of Grade 10. Keywords: external examinations, curriculum, curriculum evaluation, document analysis, wash-back effect. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………